The size of the firm's managerial hierarchy, i.e. the ratio of managers to total employees ?47?, also known as the firm's administrative intensity ?20?. While there are alternative measures of complexity, this ratio is particularly relevant in the context of smaller firms, as an indicator of the delegation of decision-making authority from the entrepreneur or owner-manager to 
professional managers who specialize in certain complex tasks ?9,54?. In fact, Miller and Toulouse ?49? found the relative profitability, sales growth and return on investment of dynamic small firms to be higher among those that had recruited a proportionally higher number of professional managers.